Attachment vs Familiarity

Attachment and Familiarity are the phases of any relationship. First you get familiar with someone and then the familiarity increases which leads to Attachment. Even for a baby, first it has to get familiar with the mother. Once it gets familiar with the mother's touch, her smell, her voice, it gets attached to her emotionally. Its how nature is.

Everyday while going to office, I take a short cut to avoid the main road. It saves me a lot of time as it lets me bypass the traffic. It was on this short cut that I first saw the old man. He was holding his crutches and standing in the balcony, looking at the vehicles passing by. He was wearing a loose pyjama and a kurta and had a newspaper in his hand. I did try to see which newspaper it was, but pardon me, I have a bit of Myopia which didn't allow me to. I wondered whether all the vehicles which passed by were causing him irritation or whether he was simply used to them. Once I got to office, I forgot all about the old man. The next day while going to office, I saw the old man again standing there in the balcony with his crutches. Since that day up until last week, I saw the old man everyday. But from a week, I had not been seeing him. The balcony remained empty. Everyday when I took the shortcut I instinctively looked up to the balcony to see if the old man would be there. I used to feel a twinge of sadness to see the lonely balcony. Yesterday while taking my usual road, I looked up the balcony out of practice. It gave me such pleasure to see the old man sitting there on the chair reading the newspaper! It brought a huge smile onto my face. I almost wanted to shout out to him and greet him in welcome.

It made me wonder whether this was Familiarity or Attachment. My emotions were attached to the presence or absence of a person whom I hadn't spoken to even once. The emotions lasted hardly for 10 minutes, but it still did bring a slight change in my mood. Strange how the mind works eh?

2011.

I was buying some flowers when I saw this little girl sitting on the sand. She was no more than 3 years old. Her mother was inside, mixing the cement for construction work. The little girl was sitting on a huge pile of sand next to a dog. The girl had the dog’s face in her hand and she was talking to it. Although the words were quite incomprehensible, the dog had its eyes focused on the girl as though listening to her in rapt attention. Quite a double irony actually! The little girl then took some sand from the pile and started putting it on the dog’s face. The dog closed its eyes slowly and I swear I saw a trace of smile on its face! It stayed there silently while the girl put the sand on its face like a face pack. Then the girl’s mother called out to her. She quickly got up and left. The dog stayed there for 2 seconds, opened its eyes and shook itself all over. All the sand fell off and it trotted behind the girl faithfully.


A big flashy car suddenly stopped at the crossroad. I screeched to halt behind it. I’m not the kind of person who honks at cars or cows. I just cursed under my breath and took a dangerous swerve to avoid a collision. An old man was standing there, outside his house, observing my reactions. As I sped off, his eyes met mine, and he raised his hand and mouthed “Calm down, Calm down”. I instantly slowed down with a smile on my face and rode away.

My aunt had a Prepaid Mobile connection whose call rates were 1Re/min. She talks a lot on the phone. Her mobile Bills, needless to say, were quite high. Her husband was not very happy with this. When I went to visit her, she complained to me about this. I told her that she could switch the Call rates Plan to something cheaper. Being a little ignorant to the tech-world, she asked me if that would change her number. I told her that the number would remain the same, only the call rates would go down. She confirmed this with me 6 times, by asking the same question in 6 different ways. “Will the phone number change? Will my friends need to call on another new number? Will I have to give all my friends another number? … ” After about 20 minutes of Q&A, we walked down to the Mobile shop and got the plan changed. The first thing she did after we got home was make a nice big hot cup of tea for me. Then she sat next to me and peeled an orange. She said, “Thank you. I can now talk longer with my friends and my husband needn't worry”. Her husband grimaced behind her but she smiled and started peeling another orange for me.


Small instances like these make you feel so positive and happy. It needn’t always be alcohol.
After one dormant blog year, it’s a post.
Happy new year.